Dear Jacob, Pick Us!

I’ve figured out who buys the most printing in this country—colleges and universities. Every single day for the past, oh, three months, at least five pieces of mail from a college or university has slipped through our front door mail slot.

Our son Jacob is a high school junior. Institutions of higher learning are beckoning him with #9 letter packages, self-mailers, 9x12˝ perfect bound beauties, and more. So far, I’ve not seen any QR codes. I’m keeping my eyes peeled for them.

For those of you with children in college or even well beyond the college years, you’ve surely experienced this Niagara Falls avalanche of direct mail. I’ve started a folder to collect all of it, but I’m going to need to rent a storage unit pretty soon, by the looks of it.

While Jacob’s incredibly unmoved by this mountain o‘ mail, it’s me, the print addict, who pores over it with giddy abandon. Particularly eye catching are the recruitment pieces from Tufts and Duke. But then, I’m not the one they’re recruiting.

In a few weeks, we start visiting college campuses to see which ones might be a good fit for J. I expect he’ll be paying attention to the campus, to curricula and courses, to golf teams and, who am I kidding, to the co-eds (there’s an old-fashioned word).

I, on the other hand, will be dragging a steamer trunk behind me as we take campus tour after campus tour—the better to stash all of the additional print materials I hope they’ll provide.